Fine Art

When the Barrick Museum shed its natural history element to function solely as an art museum, we were so giddy over its partnership with the closed Las Vegas Art Museum that we failed to dig further up its sleeve. So, naturally, when Barrick announced its film series last month, we fell to the ground in praise of the art gods.There had been talk of bringing in films, but there’s always talk about this somewhere. Aside from the former Multiplexer Space at Emergency Arts and other scattered efforts over the years, there have been few offerings. An “occasional” film series trickling into the art community was nothing short of fantastic. That it opened with the comically grim, hilarious and mind-bending work of Deville Cohen makes it all the more celebratory.

The Details

Barrick Films series

Featuring Deville Cohen in April and Jessie Stead in May

Tuesday and Thursday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.; Saturday, noon-5 p.m.; free

Barrick Museum, 895-3381

Using Xerox photocopies and office supplies, the Israeli-born artist living in New York City presents flat but animated facsimiles of everyday life in vignettes that can best be described as endearingly hyper-fake renditions of reality set to accompanying ambient noise. Cohen’s sculpture-meets-theater-meets-film features his partially visible prop masters, intentionally failing to meet expected levels of discretion while (literally) carrying out the storyline.

In Poison (2011), his 8-ball and die meet up at a gas station, catching a ride in the cab of a pickup truck that’s been wandering the multileveled freeway systems and out into the majestic natural world. It’s a flimsy paper construction playing on our perceptions, while oil, blood and water ooze—represented by lace—in this grim story based on the bizarre relationship between the natural and the man-made.

The 18-minute film, on continuous loop with an excerpt from Cohen’s Cabbage Tree, plays Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Director Jessie Stead’s 2012 How to Quit Smoking at the Moon Hotel will be featured in May.